Hurts Like Heaven
by LadyPalma
Summary: A collection of one shots about my favourite pairing using my favourite band's songs.
1. Christmas lights

**Hey everyone! So, I started a new story (I'm a desperate case I know) and naturally it is with my OTP (Cromwell and Queen Catherine). It's basically a collection of song-fiction based on Coldplay's songs. The first one I decided to use is of course "Christmas Lights" and with this I want to wish you all a merry christmas! :) That's all for now, hope you like it and please let me know what you think and if you'd like me to continue^^**

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**Christmas Lights**

**Christmas night, another fight****  
Tears, we cried a flood  
Got all kinds of poison in  
Of poison in my blood**

He turned his back to the Palace and instinctively took a hand under the right eye: he didn't feel anything, but he knew that they were there; yes, those years were invisible but they were there. He kept a straight face all evening, during the audience with His Majesty arguing absurd excuses to obtain an absurd permission, and in the end he now found himself to do that travel in secret anyway. It wasn't worth, he wasn't exactly famous for his strict observance of rules and that visit was something more than just an exercise to try to elude them.

**I took my feet to Oxford Street  
Trying to right a wrong  
Just walk away, those windows say  
But I can't believe she's gone**

"Are you leaving the Court, Master Cromwell?"

Thomas turned again hearing that voice and he was suddenly keeping straight face again, noticing the imperial ambassador.

"yes, Your Excellency, by King's commando f course" he answered. What a brash! He scolded himself mentally and a laugh barely escaped his mouth "But after all you are leaving tomorrow morning, aren't you?"

"I have to greet someone" Chapuys said with a defiant smile, letting perfectly understand the refer to the Princess of Wales, who for the first time would have spent Christmas far away.

"Oh, I have to greet someone too" Cromwell simply replied, retuning the smile and climbing on the horse.

He had to hurry up if he didn't want to meet the ambassador again.

**When you're still waiting for the snow to fall  
Doesn't really feel like Christmas at all**

Why did he feel the sudden need to go to her? Rationally he didn't know, and yet there must have been a reason. He had ridden all night and it wasn't a night like the others, but Christmas night… Could it be possible that he didn't have anything better to do? Again the same question, and again he was looking for a reason. Maybe for him it was a night like all the others after all, maybe for him that night wasn't Christmas.

It was cold and dark and there were lights lighting up the street. But there was something missing. Maybe something simple, as snow.

**Up above, candles on air flicker  
Oh, they flicker and they float  
And I'm up here holdin' on  
To all those chandeliers of hope**

Lights were brighter now, while a line of candles overdrew the sunlight just appeared in that forgotten house, where he could feel Christmas even less.

"Master Cromwell, you are quite unexpected" Lady Elizabeth Darrell whispered opening half sleepy the door.

"I'm sorry for the time…" he replied, feeling strangely uncomfortable.

He was realizing maybe only in that moment the power of his impulsiveness: it was like through all those hours of travel he had lived a dream and now that he had awakened, he didn't understand himself his absurd act. Explaining it could have been even more difficult, because if it was a moment like any others for him, for anybody else it was still night and it was still Christmas.

"I go calling my lady" the lady added soon after, breaking the silence.

"No, wait!" he stopped her "Let her sleep, I will wait"

"oh no, my lady didn't sleep all night… It must be the Christmas…" she replied with a tone full of bitterness starting to climb up the stairs, letting him alone to focus on the light of the candles and the strange happiness that along with the hit they seem to emanate.

**Like some drunken Elvis singin'  
I go singin' out of tune  
Sayin' how I always loved you, darlin'  
And I always will**

Lady Darrell didn't make him wait for too long, she climbed down almost immediately and she wasn't alone now. Catherine nodded as a greeting and she approached the window slightly open, closing her eyes for a moment; with her hair unusually left down and without the royal jewels, she seemed more tired and neglected than six months before when she had left the Court. But the fulcrum of her strength and grace, was to be found in her eyes and when he felt them on him after so long, the "sad queen" as she was known now all over Europe, appeared to him as an angel, as the most brighter light of all, the one that emanated more hit and hope.

"What happened?" that angel asked suddenly, while a certain worry became tangible in her tone usually controlled.

"Nothing. I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas" he replied while a smile was forming unwillingly on his lips.

She stared at him astonished and confused, but the smile was now even on her lips and that was all that mattered.

"Only this, now I will go" he whispered then making a bow, while she, still astonished, simply nodded.

**Oh, when you're still waiting for the snow to fall  
Doesn't really feel like Christmas at all**

"Wait! Maybe it is better if you wait to leave again" Catherine exclaimed quietly, calling him back.

Her look was no more on him, but lost outside the window and the smile had become slowly a sweet laugh, the one of a child, the child she wasn't anymore, the child she was now becoming again for a moment only that day.

"it's snowing!" she explained giving him a quick look and motioning him to approach the window.

And now, it was Christmas even for them.


	2. Strawberry swing

**Strawberry Swing**

**They were sitting, they were sitting in the strawberry swing**

**And every moment was so precious**

_"Doyou enjoy the contryside then?" _

_Catherine, stopped at the shadow of the cypress, though about a moment before answering, but the smile that appeared on her lips revealed in advance her words. If she had said that she didn't like the people, the nature and even the air she had found in Devonshire with her new title of Duchess, then it would have been a real wrongdoing to her conscience. She knew deep inside that she was a Queen of England, but she had understood that it comes the time even for a Queen to give up and yes, countryside was a good way to start it all over again._

"_Yes, I do, but you don't dislike it either, do you?" she finally said, turning to the Lord Chancellor who was giving a look around clearly interested._

**They were sitting, they were talking in the strawberry swing**

**And everybody was for fighting,**

**wouldn't wanna waste a thing**

_Around them there was the full activity of that summer more productive than usual: the sun was shining high in the sky and it was enlightening the peasants' faces while they were picking up the fruits of their work. And they were arguing too, and then laughing, while the youngest were playing together and running one after the other. _

"_What are they collecting?" asked Cromwell pointing at them with a wave._

"_Strawberries" she simply replied, starting again to walk in the little way through the field._

_All the peasants took a bow at her passage and one bolder than the other ones took a strawberry from a crate and gave it to her as a gift._

"_The most beautiful strawberry to our beloved Duchess!" he exclaimed while she was thanking him giving him back one of her sweetest smile._

"_I'm loved very much here" she said to the Chancellor who had observed the scene in silence._

"_You are loved always everywhere" he replied honestly, inviting her to continue the walk._

"_Ah Master Cromwell! If this is another excuse to offer me again the transfer in the Norfolk you are totally wrong then…" she immediately warned him shaking her head._

_The thing she loved the most among the ones she had found in Devonshire was her freedom. And now everyone seemed to want take it away from her._

**Cold, cold water bring me 'round**

**Now my feet won't touch the ground**

**Cold, cold water what you say?**

**It's such, it's such a perfect day, it's such a perfect day**

"_If you like more the Kent, there is not a problem, I could find a different union there" Cromwell said half joking, trying to hold a laugh._

_And a laugh formed even on her lips._

_He had come to visit her, after two days of travel, to tell her the propose of marriage from the Duke of Norfolk with the recommendation of the King, and now he was instead already offering other plans not discussed with the people concerned yet._

"_I don't understand what would you like me to say" she whispered almost amused._

_He smiled and stopped in front of her staring at her for awhile without saying a word._

"_Why do not you tell me what would you like instead?" he finally said, turning the question._

"_I like strawberries, the ones of Devonshire are the best" she replied "And I would like to stay here with the strawberries, do you understand?" _

_Thomas nodded, finding suddenly the strawberry inside his hand._

**People moving all the time inside a perfect straight line**

**Don't you wanna curve away?**

**It's such it's such a perfect day, it's such a perfect day**

"How is it?"

It wasn't the voice of the Duchess to ask that question and it wasn't the strawberry of that so far day, the one that the Chancellor was tasting now. It was instead his nephew Richard to speak and the refer was to a fruit more mature – maybe too much – from the last harvest of that summer that was coming to an end.

"Bitter" he said, while he looked p for a short moment from the files he was working on.

Bitter as his thoughts, that were taking him back to that perfect day he had lived only three months before and that now seemed vanishing as a dream.

**Ah, now the sky could be blue, ****I don't mind **

**Without you it's a waste of time**

And a dream is always bitter, because then you awake and it hurts to see realty, a reality in which she was marrying the duke of Norfolk and he remained the son of a blacksmith.

A reality where not even strawberries are so delicious after all.

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**Hy:) So, this is another one-shot totally AU of course... Plase let me know what you think, leave me a little little review LoL See you soon, hopefully!:)**


	3. Hurts like Heaven

**Hurts Like Heaven**

**Written in graffiti on a bridge in a park**

**'Do you ever get the feeling that you're missing the mark?'**

**It's so cold, it's so cold**

**It's so cold, it's so cold**

Elbows on the table and hands joined under the chin: Thomas Cromwell was paying totally attention to the scene in front of his eyes. Because sometimes the line between lawyer and playwright is really too thin and that seemed only the long monologue of a tragedy still in progress, that maybe, who knew, could result in a comedy in the end.

"You should not mention Bessie Blount…" he suddenly said shaking his head, noting something on the paper he had on the table.

There were already too many of notes and none of them was the key of success. It was like was keeping on missing.

**Written up in marker on a factory sign**

**'I struggle with the feeling that my life isn't mine'**

**It's so cold, it's so cold**

**It's so cold, it's so cold**

The Queen looked up to him and then closed her eyes for a moment, it was more than two hours that she was repeating that sort of drama, but on the other hand, this was the dry run. It was Cromwell himself to send away all her ladies in waiting, imposing to her his presence and proposing his precise suggestion, and most of all introducing himself in her defence. Not that she could explain the reason of that sudden change nor she trusted that still so mysterious man, but she had simply decided to take the best she could from that meeting, the meeting with a real lawyer who knew of course better than her and his loyal bishop Fisher about trials.

"What should I do then?" she asked, with a whisper.

She should have been exhausted and maybe afraid, but it was impossible to see that under her behavior, always so composed. Just a careful look could note the trembling hands and, covered by two gloves of silk, the fault wasn't of course to attribute to the cold.

**On every street, every car, every surface are names**

**Tonight the streets are ours and we're writing and saying**

**Don't let them take control**

**No we won't let them take control**

Thomas shook his head for the second time, letting the eyes go again to the paper; he couldn't have found there the answer to that question, to none of the many that were still waving in his head. Wolsey's two faces, who was suddenly trying to prevent the divorce of the King and so the rise of the Boleyns, his own two faces, passing from "messenger of Satan to "lawyer of the Saint Queen" in less than a day; and then the trial that would have anyway ended in favor of the Queen with a sentence that wouldn't have had anyway importance for the King. Why was it all happening?

Because it's how the world goes and the most powerful ones take control.

"Just be natural" he suggested strangely speechless, drawing a long and confuse line over all the notes.

And looking slowly up, it was there he saw it. The mask had crumbled down and a flash of pure irritation crossed Catherine's blue eyes, who had suddenly stood up.

"Just stop it! Do not you realize that what you have just said makes no sense? It is a pradox!" she said starting to walk in the room "First you tell me what to say, what to do, how to move and almost how to breath and then you say to be natural!"

**Yes, I feel a little bit nervous,**

**Yes, I feel nervous and I cannot relax,**

**How come they're out to get us?**

**How come they're out when they don't know the facts?**

The Secretary looked at her astonished in complete silence, with the pen still in his hand and the only sound of Catherine's steps as a background.

"I have never seen you so angry" he finally murmured while a strange smile started to forme on his lips.

"Because no one has ever seen me like this!" she answered with a still more angry tone "You are! You make me…just…"

She bit a lip not finding the words and closed her eyes for a moment, trying to regain control, letting herself fall again on the chair at her back.

"I did not know to put your patience so to the wringer!" he exclaimed standing up slowly and approaching her.

"You make me nervous, that is it!" she confirmed, completing the sentence.

"Then I will be sure of being out in front of you in the court… Because this is what I want to see" he said taking one of her gloved hand to his lips.

**See the arrow that they shot, trying to tear us apart**

**Took the fire from my belly and the beat from my heart**

**Still I won't let go**

**Still I won't let go of you...**

"Really?" Catherine whispered with the hand still in his.

It was still trembling and this time maybe it wasn't because of the cold nor the fear.

"I want for just one time, you will not be the one to loose patience… I want Norfolk and Boleyn to stand up and shut "_Quo usque tandem abutere, Catalina, patientia nostra_?" **[*]**

A smile appeared even on her lips now at those words, and it became soon after a real laugh under standing the witty wordplay between Cicero's oration and her name in Spanish.

And then suddenly any trace of that joyful moment disappeared to leave a bitter feeling, because everything that's beautiful and pure, ends to do this: it hurts.

**'Cause you do...**

**Oh you, use your heart as a weapon**

**And it hurts like heaven**

And that's what was missing. Cromwell understood that finally and it wasn't too late yet.

A lady had just entered the room to announce the imminent start of the trial and Catherine had stood up again ,ready to as a lioness, but she was still there and she seemed even more willing to accept his advice now.

"You should look at them in the eyes, everyone of them" he said seeing in her eyes the intuition he had had "Your eyes hurt"

They hurt as the tears she left unexpressed, as the previous laugh, as an arrow that hit and reaches straight to the heart.

"Hurt?" she repeated confused.

He simply nodded and didn't adding anything else, but felt a strangely familiar pain.

It was the same pain he felt when he thought of Heaven.

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**[*] "_How long will you still abuse of our patience, O Catilina_" , it is the very start of Cicero's first Catilinaria, against his enemy Catilina, who had made a plot against the Roman Res Publica!**

**Here I am with another one-shot using this time one of my favourite songs ever "Hurts Like Heaven"... It's of course AU and a what if story. I beg your pardon for the wordplay I had to put in! LoL School is stressing me! Anyway let me know what you think!**


	4. Warning sign

**Warning Sign**

**A warning sign**  
**I missed the good part, then I realized**  
**I started looking and the bubble burst**  
**I started looking for excuses**

Seymour's surly glance at the left, Brandon's sadistically amused one at the right, the echo of the King's screams in the ears and the ill-concealed unhappiness of the new Queen still in front of his eyes: that was what Thomas Cromwell could tell at ten o'clock in the morning. Good way to start a day.

Days seemed more and more long and he was more and more tired; he felt his power, that were already standing upon fragile bases, sway every minute a little more and his last move, promoting the King's marriage with Anna of Cleves, has become a complete disaster. God was punishing him maybe, and in the meanwhile his own conscience was punishing him to have risked too much. He closed the door at his back and closed his eyes for a moment.

Even that 13 April would have been a normal day.

**You came back to haunt me, and I realized**  
**That you were an island and I passed you by**  
**And you were an island to discover**

Two goblets of hot wine, hot as was at the moment her hand that he was keeping in his own and Catherine's sweet eyes in front of him: that was what Thomas Cromwell could tell at eight o'clock in the evening. Good way to finish a day, and there was no irony this time.

Enemies or friends? It was hard to say in the sudden change in their relationship during those four months since the coronation of Anne, the new Anne. Then they met a compromise, they were adversaries, a word that meant nothing and everything at the same time. They had their own opinions, they kept their contrasts, but they found a contact: they could not hate each other for a while, they could spend some time together, they could spend _that evening_ together.

And maybe that 13 April would have had something special.

**Come on in,**  
**I've got to tell you what a state I'm in**  
**I've got to tell you in my loudest tones**  
**That I started looking for a warning sign…**

Catherine's hand moved away and reached the goblet. The one of his guest was still completely full.

"You can drink it, it is not poisoned" she invited him, slightly ironic, breaking the silence in which they were unusually absorbed.

Thomas made a hint of a smile at that bitter joke, took the goblet and approach it to his lips, then he changed his mind and put it again on the table.

"I am afraid that the King wants to kill me" he finally said with a sigh, too tired to hide his tiredness.

Catherine looked down for a moment at that statement, so surprisingly sincere, so terribly possible.

"He appointed you Earl" she simply noted then, as if that fact was a guarantee for the future.

But things weren't that way and they both knew that. It could have perfectly been Henry's last joke, the last defeat for the ones who wanted Cromwell dead, the last victory for a man who had gained more than he could have ever hoped to ask for.

It was an unexpected gift, an unexplainable mystery, maybe a warning sign.

**When the truth is, I miss you**  
**Yeah the truth is, that I miss you so**

The danger and the fear of prison and death weighted on him, and yet in that moment have disappeared. It wasn't often to happen, but sometimes he felt better, almost fine, and it was unusual to note that most of the times, she was there when it happened. The truth was that he missed seeing her figure in the Palace and he missed the little talks. The truth was that maybe he missed just her.

"But, my lady, what did you want to tell me?" Thomas asked, remembering suddenly that he wasn't the one to ask for that meeting.

"Nothing…" she whispered "I just wanted to say happy birthday…" added then giving him one of her best smiles.

And he took all the time to observe that smile. Because it was a too clear answer, even if not at the question he was looking for. It was the warning sign that he really missed her.

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**Here I am with the new chapter! This one was with the song "Warning sign". Since we don't know the day when he was born, I invented the 13 April as his birthday!**

**See you soon (let's hope!)**


	5. Yellow

**Yellow**

**Look at the stars**

**Look how they shine for you**

**And everything you do**

**Yeah, they were all yellow**

"_Look at the stars"_

_It was a simple innocent sentence that broke an almost asphyxiating silence and set incoherently in that already incoherent conversation. The Queen answered that way to the Cardinal Wolsey's requests, which even to Thomas Cromwell's ear, just entered at his service, sounded more like provocations. But the real provocation had been in the end that invite that had nothing to deal with the Great Matter of the King. The Cardinal wrinkled his nose, and he had been the one to look up to the sky._

_The stars were beautiful that evening, and they were splendidly yellow._

**I swam across**

**I jumped across for you**

**Oh what a thing to do**

**'Cause you were all yellow**

_Yellow came to shine again some months later, in the bright dresses the Queen used to wear always more frequently. It was yellow the dress she was wearing that day, yellow as the new curtains of the joust which had no more her initial on it, yellow as the bow tied on her wrist, as a favor she would have not given. Yes, it was another the letter on the cloth, A after the name of the lady that stole the King's heart, the same lady Henry was asking now the favors for the game against Suffolk._

"_Yellow looks well on you" Cromwell had said._

_A sentence like the others that got lost in the enthusiasm of the game, that anyway came to their ears softened at that distance, where in the middle of the crowd the Sad Queen and the Secretary had found each other. A sentence like another, which had the only purpose to distract her from that theatrically intimate encounter between Henry and Anne. And as expedient, it seemed to have worked._

"_Do you have to tell me something else, Master Cromwell?" she had asked turning slowly her head and staring at him with her shining light blue eyes covered by tears. _

"_The Cardinal wants to see you just after the joust" he announced following with his look the movement of her hands and touching suddenly one in an apparently casual gesture._

_Then he had left again and she looked again at the main scene just in time to see her husband removing his helm with a victorious smile._

_Maybe she realized only later in her chambers that the yellow ribbon on her wrist had disappeared, what she would have never guessed was that it was the Secretary to have stolen it from her._

**So then I took my time**

**Oh all the things I've done**

**And it was all yellow**

Thomas sighed deeply laying on the wall in the Great Hall, while the happy Court was completely covered by yellow, in a sort of ironic mourning. Yes, because in Spain it was not black the color of death and he was understanding now the sense of that apparent happiness that Catherine was showing off in her last days.

Now that was all irremediably _too_ yellow.

**Your skin, oh your skin and bones**

**Turned into something beautiful**

**Do you know, you know I love you so?**

… **You know I love you so?**

He raised a sleeve, unveiling the secret he had been hiding for about five years: the ribbon twirled between his fingers and, feeling the warmness of the cloth, it seemed to him to almost perceive for contrast her incessantly cold hands, to almost see her eyes, to almost feel a shiver, to almost cry. And maybe that was true.

"It is a beautiful day, isn't it?" the King said, passing him by.

A bitter smile crossed the Chancellor's lips, could it be possible that he was the same man who the noght before had broke down and cried in front of the last letter that his first wife had written to him? Yes, it was possible, because Catherine of Aragon was dead and it had to be for everyone a closed chapter; she was dead and nothing was left of her, except the sad regret of a coward man and that yellow ribbon.

**It's true**

**Look how they shine for you**

"_Look at the stars"_

Those words reechoed now on his mind and he found himself looking up to the sky. They say that every time a falling star appears, it means that someone has reached the sky. There were too much stars that night.

And one was more yellow than the others.

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**I just can't stop writing about these two, I'm sorry LoL I'd really appreciate a feedback ;)**


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